


The Highlight Of My Lowlife

by ubicaritas (Janet)



Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, inspired by a song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 23:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20497013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janet/pseuds/ubicaritas
Summary: Bodie and Doyle mean everything to each other, even if they don't say it often enough.





	The Highlight Of My Lowlife

_‘The highlight of my lowlife’_

There was this ridiculous bouncy pop song playing at the chemist’s when I stopped in earlier. It seemed that everyone in the place – the schoolgirl in with her mother, the young lad at the cash register, and yes, even that mum – were all singing along with it, right out in the open! Appalling taste in music, they had… no sense of decorum whatsoever. And it sounded awful, all tinny on the speakers in the shop. But the words were clear, and they took my mind straight to… him. My partner. The man that George-bloody-Cowley assigned to me all those years ago. Doyle… He’s exactly that, the highlight of my lowlife.

Away from home at fourteen, I have a career path that took me through the Merchant Navy, a spell in Dakar, and then a long period of looking only as far as the next paycheque. Life as a mercenary in the troubled places of Africa meant you didn’t question what side you were on, or whose politics you were ‘supporting’ … all that mattered was the success of the mission and, of course, your own survival. Weapons sold to both sides of a conflict? No matter… there were atrocities enough to go around. I thought I had seen the worst qualities of humanity. And then a turn in a Congo prison showed me just how low life could go.

Reclaiming my life on British soil, the logical option open to me was to enlist in Her Majesty’s service. I did, after all, know how to be a soldier. Years as a paratrooper and finally as a member of the Regiment kept me fighting, and for a while at least it was for a ‘side’ I could believe in… but a tour in Belfast brought me crashing right back down again.

My secondment to this new outfit called CI5 just seemed to be more of the same, a mere transfer of my skills to fight ‘anarchy, acts of terror, crimes against the public’, or at least, that’s how Major Cowley puts it, in his speech to earnest new recruits, and “… to keep England smelling, even if ever so faintly, of lavender and roses.” To me it looked like yet another opportunity to see life at its lowest, most depraved, and desperate level.

And I was right, of course. The Squad went after the Irish lot and all their various groups and sub-sects, terrorists from Europe who liked to blow planes – and people – out of the sky. There were Russians and the other Eastern Bloc agents… I even had a journey or two behind the iron curtain, and wasn’t that eye-opening.

But… CI5 is different, and for one reason: my partner, Ray Doyle. Ex-copper, opinionated and usually quick to let it be heard; sarky, frequently irritable, prone to sinking into depths of guilt and self-analysis, but tough as old boots, he is. And through all that passion and drive, he maintains an idealism, a view of the good in everyone and everything that I can’t even come close to understanding. But he helps me to see a bit of it, enough that I can get through our assignments and return for more, with him at my side, and watching my back. The highlight of my lowlife.

And I need to tell him so, tonight.

*

_‘The highlight of my lowlife’_

Those ridiculous words blared out of the speakers in my car this morning when I turned it on. Must’ve been young Smith left the radio on yesterday; the Cow has us bringing the infancy corps along on some of our assignments. Appalling taste in music, young Smith, but put her on a weapons range or out into one of our Brian’s training scenarios, and watch out! This song would be just like her, bouncy and cheerful, but it wasn’t her that I first thought of when I heard the words. No, that honour belonged to… him. My partner. The man that George-bloody-Cowley assigned to me all those years ago. Bodie… Because he’s exactly that, the highlight of my lowlife.

My average childhood drifted into more challenging teen years… I ran with a rough crowd and for a while it must have looked like I would be lost to a life of poor choices. We gathered in the various abandoned factories and warehouses long gone to neglect or wartime damage, and plotted our daily activities. A pass through the local shops for a bit of petty thievery here, a run by the armouries with a spray can of paint there… none of it particularly worrying, but definitely the gateway to more serious criminal activity.

My temper, never an easy thing for my adolescent self to control, got the better of me one day when our mob was up to no good on the edges of a council estate. The leading tough decided it would be fun to lure a couple of lads on their way home from school and knock them around a bit, a show of force that their neighbourhood was being watched… fearmongering, really, but it turned ugly when one of the kids decided to fight back, and our leader went to make an example of him…. with his knife. My latent sense of right and wrong finally engaged, but I was too immersed in the world of the gang for my control to catch up. My own knife came out, and I cut him up pretty good, our leader, but then the mob turned on me. I woke up in hospital with a couple of patched-up broken bones that included my cheek. Along with the physical pain came the understanding of how badly I’d let my mother down; she never completely lost her faith in me, but it took about as severe a beating as the one I’d gotten. I had never felt so low.

A move to London to pursue my other youthful passion had me spending a couple of semesters in art school. While I was never good enough to consider making this a career, the time did allow me to sharpen my focus on what I was increasingly seeing in my future: the police force.

But even that was not to be, as my early success in the Met led to an assignment to the Drug Squad and all its difficult work. Victims / addicts in dire straits, and the wretched evil monsters, the dealers, who put them there. The true ugliness, though, came in the form of corruption amongst some of my fellow members of the Squad. Coppers on the take, abuse of authority… all the things I had come to loathe and despise. But the unofficial retribution that followed after I turned them in, the way my career ground to a halt and the way my compatriots left me out in the cold, well, that showed me how low life could really go.

CI5 just puts a bit of a different spin on the same theme, with us agents trying to keep a lid on Cowley’s bogeymen of anarchists and terrorists. Political assassins from Eastern Europe, home-grown lunatics with mass murder on their agenda, and even more corruption in both civilian and government circles. People killed, lives destroyed…

But CI5 is where I will stay, and for one reason: my partner, William Andrew Philip just-Bodie. Ex-mercenary, ex-soldier, a man with the blackest sense of humour at the most inappropriate times. And through it all, he keeps his focus on the task at hand and drags mine there too, pulling me out of the darkness and guilt that accompany me on so many of our assignments; he’s at my side and watching my back. The highlight of my lowlife.

And I need to tell him so, tonight.

*

_Tonight_

From two separate directions they converged on the flat at the end of the day, one arriving within seconds of the other. By some miracle both found parking within the block, and they met on the pavement in front of the modest building which housed their current living quarters. George Cowley, in a fit of budget-crunching the likes of which CI5 hadn’t seen in years, had paired up his long-standing partnerships into his supply of two-bedroom flats, in an effort to keep housing costs down and the minister off his back about expenses. The move had produced the hoped-for savings, and for the most part, tightened up and improved the working relationships of his top teams. Not that this particular pair of agents had needed the help, of course…

“Bodie.” Doyle nodded coolly at his partner.

“Doyle.” Bodie returned the greeting in equal tones.

They always played it cool, outside, for they never knew whose eyes could be watching. 

Together they went up the front steps, in the door, and climbed still more stairs to their second-floor flat. Doyle unlocked the door; Bodie closed it behind them, then set and double-checked both locks. By the time he’d completed the routine but oh-so-necessary chore, Doyle had finished his own customary practice, a brisk walkthrough of the entire flat, hand loosely tucked under his jacket next to his shoulder holster. Security, even in their own place of residence, was never to be taken for granted. Doyle's near-fatal shooting all those years ago had taught both of them that hard lesson.

Bodie watched Doyle’s hand pull back from his gun; Doyle watched Bodie’s shoulders settle slightly, visible even through the jacket he wore. They both took a deep breath and let themselves move one step closer to relaxation.

Doyle switched on a lamp in the lounge; it seemed overly bright in the dim twilight of the early evening, but the glow banished the shadows of the day and warmed the atmosphere in the room. Together they both removed jackets and holsters; Bodie untied his shoes and set them neatly on the mat near the door, while Doyle toed off his trainers on his way to the sofa, abandoning them where they fell in the middle of the floor. He flopped down at one end, feet immediately up on the coffee table; Bodie sat more sedately in the more comfortable of the two armchairs.

“Hell of a day.” It could have been either of them that said it first, even though it really hadn’t been anything beyond a typical day for the Squad.

“Yeah.”

“At least all the infants were returned to their homes, safe and sound. Christ…” A head was shaken, the other nodded in agreement. “We were never that young, as recruits.”

“Nah, we were probably younger. And had less experience, before we were turned loose on an unsuspecting city, and country.”

“A baptism by fire, that’s what we had.” Bodie stretched his legs and added his feet to the coffee table beside Ray’s. “It’s a wonder we survived the first week, let alone…”

“… let alone a month… a year… eight years…” Ray stood and walked over to the cabinet where he kept his alcohol. He poured a generous couple of fingers of scotch into a pair of glasses and returned to the sofa, placing one on the table beside Bodie, and held the other in his hands. staring into the amber liquid.

_I need to tell him so, tonight… _

“Bodie.”

“Ray.”

They spoke at the same time, and then laughed at it, this the continuing proof that they were on the same wavelength, both on the job and off.

Bodie shifted from the chair to the sofa, settling in near enough to Ray to feel the warmth from hip to knee. Picking up his scotch, he clinked the glass gently against Ray’s. “To another day done,” he said. “And… to us. To you, because I don’t tell you often enough…” He trailed off and took a healthy swallow of his drink. 

“Ah, Bodie, you great pillock.” Ray’s wide green gaze reflected the same sentiments right back at his partner. He too sipped at the scotch, then put his glass down on the table. “Cheers to you, and to us.” 

** _End_ **

**Author's Note:**

> Song credit: _The Highlight of my Lowlife_ by Poppy, from the EP _Bubblebath_
> 
> _A couple of weeks ago:_  
brain: oooh! a shiny new idea!  
me: no, brain, we have other work to do  
brain: but, shiny! idea!  
me:  
me: (sigh) okay, brain, you have an hour, that's all  
brain: (snicker) for sure, an hour, no problem  
me: (now that it's all done) hey brain, that was more than an hour, you know
> 
> (not like I should be writing anything else, like, say, my Big Bang story...)


End file.
